


Back at the Beginning

by SegaBarrett



Category: The Godfather (1972 1974 1990)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:33:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28552425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Sonny and Connie in a few snapshots of time.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8
Collections: New Year's Resolutions 2021





	Back at the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chasing_givenchy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasing_givenchy/gifts).



> A/N: I don't own The Godfather, and I make no money from this.

“Don’t interfere.”

Both of his parents had been saying the same thing to Sonny, over and over, but he wasn’t listening.

It wasn’t proper. It wasn’t traditional. It wasn’t right. He would create more problems than he might think he would be solving, and anyway, it wasn’t any of his business.

And he ignored all of that advice. Because what was advice to white-hot rage, and what was advice to protecting little Connie, who would always be little Connie to him?

Sure, he’d gently order her around like he did the rest of them – and she’d always given as good as she got – but she’d been that little diamond who he was always a little more careful with because, hell, she was the baby and, hell, she was Connie and underneath the fiery temper they shared, there had always seemed to be something in her that cried out for more. More what, Sonny wasn’t sure, but it had always seemed like something she would stop just short of saying.

And he wanted that for her. Whatever it was, he wanted that for her.

After all, Sonny was happy with what he had. He’d take over the family business one day, live pretty high on the hog and have more mistresses than he had time for. 

Fredo, he hoped, would find somewhere where his kind heart would be a strength and not a weakness (maybe social work or nursing or something like that, Sonny mused, one of those chick professions). Michael would end up being a lawyer or something, just like Tom. They were the college boys.

And Connie would have married a man who loved her.

He had had that planned out, even. He’d met Carlo in his circle of friends and he wasn’t sure how the idea occurred to him at first, to match his friend with his sister. But that was what people did, after all – you brought in someone from a family you knew or some friend of yours because otherwise you had your sister marrying some creep you didn’t know from who knew where and they weren’t solid.

Sonny had been convinced that Carlo was solid up until that first time he’d heard him tell Connie to shut up.

***

“Don’t interfere.”

That was what his father told him the first time he had leapt into a rage and threatened to wipe the floor with Carlo Rizzi.

Vito had gripped Sonny by the arm and told him to stop.

Told him to be cautious. To be more level-headed.

It wasn’t as if it was the first time that Vito told his eldest son that.

Sonny promised that he would. Promised that he would bite his fist rather than rain down blows upon Carlo’s head.

That lasted up until the day he saw Connie’s two black eyes.

***

He was sure that Carlo had gotten the message. The sight of his former friend humiliated in the spray of the fire hydrant had taken the venom out of Sonny, at least for now. He had never been able to hurt someone who didn’t fight back, a problem apparently not shared by Carlo.

Sonny set about deciding that he would stop in on Connie more, and unannounced, to ensure that Carlo had turned himself around.

It felt like a failure, a failure that fell on him. What the hell had he been able to do for his family recently? This bloody war was making Tom doubt him, Connie was being treated like she was nothing, Michael was now a murderer and had been sent off to Sicily, and all he had been able to do for Fredo was hide him in Las Vegas.

And then the phone had rung again, screaming off the hook before his mother picked it up and handed it over to him.

He knew what the news would be long before he heard Connie’s panicked, frantic voice. Her voice telling him not to come.

Of course he would come.

Of course, he would always come to get her.

***

Sonny could remember the first time he had seen Connie’s tiny little face. He had been seven years old, continually covered in bruises and scrapes from fights or, when no other neighborhood kid was around to fight, a tree that had to be climbed or a patch of poison ivy that needed to be climbed into.

His father had looked at him with disappointment, but the look had softened quickly as he ushered him back inside the house.

“Your sister has come home,” Vito had said, and it had been profound to Sonny in a way that nothing had ever seemed before that moment. There was a gravity to the words, and a responsibility too, that made Sonny stand up and take notice even before his mother walked into the living room holding Connie in her arms.

“Here,” Carmela said, “Would you like to hold her? Her name is Constanzia.”

“Constanzia,” Sonny repeated, “That’s a very long name.” He ran a finger gently over the baby’s tiny nose. She seemed so fragile, so very small.

“I think we’ll call her Connie for short. What do you think of that?” 

“I think I like it very much,” Sonny said, and he swore to himself that he would protect this tiny thing no matter what it might take. “Hi, Connie.” He pressed a little kiss to her forehead. “Welcome home.”

***

If he could have done it all over again, he would have found her someone else. As he drove down the causeway, hands slamming against the steering wheel in anger (at himself, most of all) he tried to reconfigure the whole course of events.

How had Carlo managed to pull his slick shit in a way that hadn’t allowed Sonny to see right through it?

He’d stood there and watched as Carlo had sat beside Connie at dinner, shooting little glances over at her and she back at him, as if it was a good fit. A good match.

Usually, Sonny knew people.

Now, he wasn’t even sure that he knew himself. Nor did he know what he was going to do, exactly, when he reached Connie’s house.

He would open the door to his car and usher her inside, first – that much was obvious. He would bring her home and then… and then…

And then, what would he do with Carlo? 

He pressed his foot down on the gas.

And his mind repeated: _And then… and then…_

He would figure it out when he got there. 

***

“Who here knows my buddy, Carlo Rizzi?”

Sonny clapped his hand on the table in celebration.

He noticed that Connie was pretending to look away, but kept peeking over at Carlo when it seemed as if no one was looking.

He wanted Connie to be happy. She’d been too much the ugly duckling for his taste, passed over by guys – though probably less out of not thinking Connie was pretty and more out of fear of what the Don might do if he caught them sniffing around his daughter – while the flashier women were higher in demand.

Like her friend Lucy Mancini, which… well, Sonny wasn’t going to touch that topic considering that since Lucy had come back from college he’d been trying to get into a room with her and, it appeared, vice versa, despite the fact that some well-meaning bystander seemed to keep trying to muddle the proceedings.

But it wasn’t really fair for Sonny to have a chicken in every pot while Connie didn’t have anyone at all, and Carlo would be glad to be set up with someone as kind as Connie, right?

Then Sonny could go back about his life. Because if not, he’d always be worrying about Connie in one way or another, the way he worried about Fredo sometimes too.

The way that, to be honest, he worried about Michael and Tom.

The way he always worried about all of them.

If they were all happy, if he could do that… then that was the kingdom, wasn’t it? 

After all, Pop had always said that family was everything. 

***

Connie looked over at Sonny and chuckled. She couldn’t stop fiddling with the veil, kept flipping it between her fingers and chuckling.

“You look great,” Sonny told her, “Look, my little sister is all grown up.”

Connie rolled her eyes.

“You have a look on your face like you’re going to put up a halo behind my head in the picture,” she said to him. “You haven’t stopped smiling since you got here.”

“Well, I stopped to break an FBI guy’s camera,” Sonny admitted.

She gave him a gentle punch in the arm.

“I’m saving you a dance,” she told him. “So make sure I know where I can find you.”

“You’ll always know where to find me,” Sonny replied, then stepped forward to creep up behind her. “Right behind ya.”

Connie’s laughter rang through the air, and church bells were ringing.

Everything was going to be all right.


End file.
